2012 Vahatra Annual Report - Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund

The extinct Holocene animals and ecosystems of Madagascar
In collaboration with Bill
Jungers at The State University
of New York, Stony Brook, Steve
Goodman is in the process
of finishing a large synthesis
written for a general audience
on Holocene extinctions on
Madagascar. The book will
be titled, “Windows into the
extraordinary recent land
animals and ecosystems of
Madagascar” and published
by The University of Chicago
Press. The text is centered
around 20 extraordinary plates
created by Velizar Simeonovski,
reconstructing different sites
on Madagascar, specifically
the animals and habitats
that existing based on data
from fossils. In each case, the
importance of natural climatic
change versus human-induced
change is assessed, in the
attempt to answer the
question as to what
happened? The ms.
should be submitted
in early 2013 and
the book should
appear late that
same year or early
in 2014. A concise
French version will
be published in the
Vahatra guide series.
ACTIVE COLLABORATIONS OF VAHATRA
In order for Vahatra to develop new directions for the Malagasy and
regional scientific communities, a number of collaborative endeavors
have been advanced. Below is a listing of some of these collaborative
projects:
• The University of Antananarivo, Department of Animal Biology
– Vahatra closely collaborates with this department in different
manners including training and mentoring of students, seminars
and classes, field schools, etc. All of the scientific founding
members of Vahatra have professional links to this department.
The ability for the association to advance on numerous fronts
particularly associated with student capacity building and field
research is directly based on this collaboration.
• Centre de Recherche et de Veille sur les maladies émergentes
dans l’Océan Indien (CRVOI), La Réunion, France – Vahatra is a
member of a large-scale project to develop a catalog of diseases
occurring amongst wild land vertebrates of the western Indian
Ocean. CRVOI through a grant generously supported by FEDER
Réunion, Programme Opérationnel de Coopération Territoriale
(2007-2013), “Faune Sauvage-Océan Indien” (project number
31189) is able to subsidize considerable portions of different
field projects. Further, researchers and students from Vahatra
have taken part in several field trips on Madagascar, nearby
islands and continental Africa to obtain samples. The laboratory
analyses of this project are advancing rapidly and a number of
very interesting results are becoming available and published.
Several different viruses and other diseases exist in the region
that may have important impact on human health. Several papers
have been submitted or are being prepared to present these
results and their implications. A Malagasy student that did his
Ph.D. based out of Vahatra, Beza Ramasindrazana, has a post-doc
post for 2013 at CRVOI. To further strengthen these ties, Steve
Goodman serves as a member of the scientific council of CRVOI.
• Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), Chicago, Illinois –
for more than 25 years, the Field Museum has been a critical
collaborator for our pedagogic and scientific projects on
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VAHATRA Annual report 2012